Lamentations: A Companion for Holy Week
In what is certainly one of the busiest seasons of the church year, it is easy for us to become so overwhelmed by administrative tasks and dressing/undressing our churches that we miss the richness of the scripture and liturgy that this season offers.
In Passiontide, our liturgy is shaped by the book of Lamentations, which this year is also the set reading for morning prayer.
Lamentations is a wonderful and important text. It is unique in the way that it engages with grief and suffering, and resonates with Holy Week in important ways. In what follows, we’ll ponder what Lamentations has to offer us in this season.
Alaa Awad, Women in the funeral march, wikimediacommons.org
Lamentations is a helpful companion for us as we journey through Holy Week because the text grapples with similar themes of grief, separation and pain to the passion narratives.
From Jesus’ tears in Gethsemene to his cry of abandonment on the cross, we come across grief again and again as we revisit the gospel’s accounts of the events of the crucifixion.
Often in the church we are tempted to rush through Holy Week to get to the joy of Easter, relieved to be able to rejoice again after a subdued 40 days of lent. This desire is understandable because we naturally want the things that bring us joy and to avoid those which remind us of suffering, or cause or cause us to suffer.
But what do we miss when we move too quickly to joy?
This week we have read portions of the book of Lamentations in morning prayer, and one of our canticles is also based on chapter 1 of the book. It begins:
1 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
2 Which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
on the day of his fierce anger.
Much of the time, only the happy part of Lamentations (the middle of chapter 3) appears in the lectionary, meaning that we don’t have the opportunity to grapple with the more difficult parts of the book.
The book opens with a description of Jerusalem as being ‘like a widow’. This image reflects the way in which the city was destroyed during the Babylonian exile, leaving the people feeling that they have been abandoned by God.
The widow image here works on multiple levels. It highlights the way in which the people felt abandoned by God, who is framed as a divine spouse in a similar way to places like Hosea and Ezekiel. It reflects how the people have been bereft of their city and temple, and also of the human cost of conflict, given that many would have lost their lives in the violence of the Babylonian invasion.
The widowed Jerusalem narrates the first chapter of the book, lamenting what she has lost and expressing her fear for the future.
As the book moves on, we hear from different narrators who explore the themes of loss and desolation.
Lamentations makes for difficult reading, but the middle part of the third chapter is well liked. It includes the words:
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
In prophetic and poetic texts, for example, Psalms of lament, there is usually a movement from despondency to praise. We almost always find a ‘happy ending’ in a text about lament or punishment, allowing us to tidy away the pain which has come before.
Not so with Lamentations.
After the encouraging words of chapter 3, we are straight back into misery and grief which lasts until the end of the book. There is no happy ending or resolution in this text.
What are we to make of this?
In relation to what he recognises as ‘an immensely powerful little book’ the Biblical scholar Paul Joyce asks ‘how might the book of Lamentations look if read in the light of theories drawn from contemporary pastoral psychology?’.1
By reading Lamentations through the lens of Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief, Joyce makes the insightful observation that the cyclical and unresolved nature of the texts reflects the experience of bereavement.2
Grief is messy and unpredictable and has no obvious end. We grieve for those who we have loved but see no more for our whole lives, even though the waya we grieve might change. Lamentations reflects this deeply human experience and affirms its importance. The text is messy because that’s what grief is like. We shouldn’t underestimate the significance of having a book like this in the Bible.
Often, the tendency in the church is to seek to tidy away pain and suffering and smooth over the cracks to make everything okay again. But the reality is that the grief of our world as it is today cannot be that easily resolved. It is imperative that we offer the hope of the gospel, but not without being willing to dwell with those who are suffering in their pain.
The book of Lamentations gives voice to those who are suffering and a person who is in pain can recognise something of their experience in the swirling lament of the text.
Holy week has many moments of grief and pain. How might that serve those in our communities who are suffering at this time? How might it be helpful for them to see that there is space for difficult emotions in worship? How might they feel recognised in the liturgy, and ultimately seen by God?
May each of us enter more fully into the pain and joy of this holy season and know more of the depths of God’s love for the world through it.
Joyce, P., ‘Lamentations and the Grief Process: A Psychological Reading’, Biblical Interpretation, 1.3 (1993), 304–20, p 304
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying (New York: Scribner, 1969)